


caesura

by buckstiel



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Aftermath of battle, Dejarik, First Kiss, Guilt, M/M, POV Poe Dameron, Post-Star Wars: The Last Jedi, Shara Bey's Ring, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-22
Updated: 2017-12-22
Packaged: 2019-02-18 08:51:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,591
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13096635
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/buckstiel/pseuds/buckstiel
Summary: The overcrowded Millennium Falcon leaves Crait with no final destination in mind.Poe leaves Crait onboard the Falcon, a head overcrowded with the events of the past week and struggling to find footing.





	caesura

**Author's Note:**

> poe dameron is my idiot son and i love him so very much. thank you.
> 
> thanks always to quidnunc-life, my beta for always <3

No one onboard the Falcon would say where they were headed, and it had to be because they didn’t know. In the chatter pushed along from adrenaline and relief, Poe overheard no guesswork, no speculation, and as that chatter cooled and heart rates settled into their new cramped loss-drenched quarters, he wondered if anyone else even wanted to know.

They claimed sections of floor or part of a wall between their friends just wide enough for the span of their own shoulders--C’ai and Nien Nunb were already slumped over each other on the arced bench behind the Dejarik board. A week ago they had nearly come to blows over the inter-squadron grav-ball game.

A week ago, all of that belonged to another lifetime altogether.

Before long, the bridge was silent. The General had closed a door to the cockpit behind her when she slowly made her way there, and even Chewbacca’s half of the conversation wouldn’t make it to the piles of exhausted, unconscious bodies. The stowaway porgs, too, kept their cooing to themselves, and someone had the foresight to switch Threepio off until further notice.

There was a bare spot of floor under the bench where Rose laid, on the other side of Finn snoring sitting up and Rey curled up beside him using his thigh as a pillow.

_Sit down_ , a voice at the back of his head pleaded. _For the sake of your knees, at least_.

But the manic energy from Crait hadn’t eased. The whole of his chest burned with it all, pulsing with every new memory from the last day replayed itself before him and sending jitters down to his ankles, and before he knew what he was doing, he had left the bridge behind to pace in the long hall that circled around the perimeter of the ship.

Possible destinations presented themselves with each step.

Hoth? No, that base collapsed into the snow.

Phindar? Unexpected, but getting a band of rebels through customs would be a nightmare, if not impossible.

That old moon of Endor? Maybe, if the General and Threepio hadn’t fallen out of favor with the Ewoks from the passage of time alone.

Jakku? No--and Poe had to laugh to himself--Finn would never let them head there.

Yavin 4--Poe stopped dead, reached for his collarbone in a scramble for the chain around his neck as his throat closed. No, no, they couldn’t go to Yavin 4. It would be too obvious.

Too obvious, and.

He sidestepped around the eddy of his train of thought and forced the current back into his feet, pacing in a tight circle in the section of hallway where he’d stopped. When Finn and Rose had emerged alive from their mission, Poe had greeted them with a beaming grin borne out of a dread-heavy panic that stamped down any crying into something solid and sharp in his stomach.

Kes had told him his own stories too many times with enough variations that Poe could trace the truthful line of it in the space between, could hardly be surprised when he found himself echoing it--he and Shara regrouping after every mission apart where something had gone terribly awry, all the misplaced emotions that bubbled up in place of what was expected of them.

(“One time,” Kes had said over dinner one night, “Admiral Ackbar walked in on us bleeding out of who knows how many wounds and your mother with a broken ankle, but both of us were doubled over laughing to the point of tears.”

Poe had frowned. “Why?”

“Well…” he’d sighed. “It’s hard to explain. And I pray you never learn from experience.”)

The fact that everyone was asleep suddenly walloped him in the stomach and forced him once again to come to a halt. He needed to talk to someone. Specific someones, but not about anything particular. The Falcon squeezed at his head-- _these here are the only ones left in the galaxy who exist and love you, the rest are gone, you saw the rest die_ \--and his shaking hand reached for the commlink in his pocket, scrolled through the contacts, scrolled faster through names he would have to delete at some point, maybe.

He hovered over Kes, wondering if the quickly spiraling news had made it to their quiet prefab house in the jungle. He hovered over Jessika and Snap, who had left for an off-the-records diplomatic mission near Mandalore. Cultivating new potential allies, Ackbar and Statura had said. General Organa had winked the idea to approval and let them take the reins and now those reins were loose. Untethered space dust around metal shards and bodies frozen in a vacuum.

His hands started to shake, first at the wrists and then all the way up to the knuckles so that each finger rattled at its own wavelength. At his feet, a porg cooed from the nest stuffed into an open panel.

“Not now,” he muttered, and those big black eyes shined back, pleading for something they couldn’t name and he couldn’t identify. “What?”

The porg cocked its head--or tried its best to, given the lack of neck.

”Don’t chew any wires. That’s the last thing we need right now.” His feet carried him forward again, on a separate frequency from the rest of the buzzing between his ears. Every time he blinked, the zip of the Raddus cutting through Snoke’s destroyer cut across the black of his vision. In the silence there, Poe heard his father’s voice, muffled, and the hesitation from before evaporated faster than Tallie could down three cups of caf in the morning.

Each syllable of her name dug a needle under his skin, hardly fading in time once the comm dialed and another voice picked up on the other end.

“Please tell me this isn’t bad news,” Kes murmured. “I…”

“Dad. It’s me, I’m okay--”

“Oh, thank the stars, thank the stars,” he said, voice cracking in the closest thing to a sob Poe had ever heard from him since Shara’s passing. “I went into the market today… heard about that newfangled Death Star and how they’d driven you from that base… the distress signal--”

Another pang burrowed into Poe’s chest and he took a sharp breath.

“If my legs weren’t the way they were, I would’ve been there.”

“And you still would have a bad back. You’d get sent back home,” Poe said.

“Like hell,” he coughed, changing the subject into something more benign like he could sense the tension twanging behind every word Poe said. He offered updates on the vegetable garden and efforts to keep the whisper birds at bay, how his favorite Five Sabers racer did in the grand prix and local kids from the village started exploring the old rebel bases at night when schools let out for the rainy season.

Kes’ voice had a familiar cadence to it, rises and falls, predictable places to insert huffs or chuckles or his special audible version of an eyeroll. But Kes read people well, especially his own son, and after a few minutes he fell silent and waited.

“Did you ever get that pet Loth cat you’d been talking about?” Poe asked when the silence dragged on too long. He’d returned to pacing around one part of the hall, eyeing the porg from its nest as it eyed his path.

“Poe.”

He sighed. “Did you and Ma know Amilyn Holdo?” he asked quietly. “From the war?” Kes’ silence kept on, so he added, “I know you weren’t in the same battles, but you all knew Leia--”

“What happened, son?”

Another blink and the image of the Raddus’ destruction came into even sharper focus, the blue of hyperspace tinged lavender along the outside as pieces of a human being were ripped apart thread by thread, atom by atom, and his own palms were raw from the effort of tugging it into action. “I messed up pretty bad.”

* * *

 

Whether or not it was actually morning was unclear, but once a full sleep cycle passed and those on the bridge had started to stir, Poe found himself still awake. His pacing had finally ceased and he had sat down beside the porg’s nest, choosing not to shrug off the baby that had climbed onto his lap and settled in the dip where his legs came together.

That was where C’ai found him a few minutes after he heard Kaydel yell at Threepio to watch where he was stepping.

“Good morning,” C’ai said with a curious glance down; or, he didn’t say “good morning” as much as an Abednedish greeting traditionally offered to the weary. 

“Hey.” 

“You made a new friend, I see.” He pointed to the porg, who yawned and turned in their sleep. 

“Maybe,” he said. “We don’t really have a lot in common.” 

C’ai nodded into a grin and slowly lowered himself beside him. After a few moments, he finally spoke, the low bass of his voice comforting over the whine of the Falcon’s engines. “Is this a bad time for…” 

“Buddy…” 

“Your mission to Jakku for Lor San Tekka was so sudden, and everything since then--”

“Yeah.”

On D’Qar, even though their underground bunkers so often stank of mildew and engine oil, they could let off steam with a few handles of Outer Rim grog and the jizz records Starck kept in his bunk. (All gone now, and him with them.) And Bastian insisted on throwing a party for a minor Dandoranian holiday Jessika had mentioned one time none of them could remember, and as the sun started to smudge the horizon in pink, Poe found himself against the back of C’ai’s bunk door. Half undressed, pinned there by thick legs, trying to learn how their mouths fit together.

“Should we talk about it?” C’ai said quietly. 

He shrugged, sighed. Saw that C’ai nodded and then felt a hand on his knee with one finger stretching to stroke the porg along their back. C’ai was waiting for him, with all the gentleness that was tossed aside the second he strapped into his X-wing. In another time, one where D’Qar didn’t smolder with new craters and curling red lines didn’t mar the salt flats of Crait, he could talk about it; or, he could learn to talk about it because he didn’t know how. 

The three times his toes had ever curled around this kind of cliff’s edge, he’d never given it enough time to talk, calling out to the other side for an answer to hold close with his own echo, seeing how the two could fit together. He always jumped--first with the Rodian back home the summer before the Academy, then with Muran, and now C’ai. 

The way C’ai eyes smiled harder than the line of his mouth warmed Poe to the core, but the core was reaching elsewhere: toward the bridge, toward the space where the outline of the bravest man he’d ever met had left its mark overnight.

“I’m sorry,” Poe said finally. 

“Don’t be,” C’ai said. “It was a good night in the midst of many terrible ones. And I’m glad for that.” His hand moved to Poe’s shoulder, then to the back of his neck to brace him there as he pressed a light peck to his cheekbone. 

As C’ai moved to get up, Poe thought about asking him to stay just for a little while longer, to talk about something other than the lone night they spent pressed together in the dark. The end of the conversation with Kes hours earlier still played over and over in his head-- _she was always going to stay behind, you didn’t cause that, do you know how many fellow Pathfinders were killed under my watch_ \--but in his father’s voice he couldn’t quite believe it.

C’ai would tell it to him straight. But it wasn’t something C’ai should have to shoulder, especially now. Especially when Poe felt himself wince into the innocent, friendly kiss on the cheek.

* * *

 

Into what would have counted as the afternoon, General Organa found him still cradling the baby porg in his legs and kicked him out of the hallway. “I don’t know what you’re doing all the way over here, Poe, but you’re sorely missed among the rest of us. Get going.”

He carefully slipped the porg back into the nest and shuffled back toward the bridge to find that the surviving crew had dispersed into the rest of the ship. Threepio was deep into a game of Dejarik with Nien Nunb, Artoo beeping unhelpful criticism at any move either considered; Kaydel waved from her corner spot with Tabala in the corner, and her small grin collapsed as his eyes tracked to where Rose still slept, spots of dried blood still dotting her face where the bacta patches had not reached. Even in this state he could see bits of Paige in her, the blank set of her face when Iolo and Bastian would say something stupid during a briefing and she’d find Poe’s gaze across the room, the eyeroll nearly imperceptible.

Over the blanket tucked up to her chin laid a golden comma of a crescent moon--another sight he’d seen so many times across briefing rooms, and it pricked at his eyes. 

“Where’d you get off to?” 

He turned around to find Rey. “Oh--y’know...just another part of the ship.” 

“I figured as much. Finn was looking for you. So was Leia, but I sense she was the one who found you.” She stepped around him, patting him on the forearm as she went. He swiveled around to follow her as she moved through the others trying to carve out a bubble of personal space on the ship, and over the shoulder of Major Ematt-- 

“Finn!” He wove his way past a knot of the surviving ground crew until he could latch both of his hands on his shoulders. “How’re you feeling?” 

“I’m okay, actually.” Finn’s eyes narrowed but at an angle closer to concern than suspicion. “I heard about… how are _you_?”

Something at the pit of Poe’s stomach started to burn. “What did you hear, and who told you?” 

“Oh, uh… Kaydel.” He thumbed over his shoulder to where she sat. “Didn’t think you’d be the kind of guy to pull a mutiny,” he whispered. 

“Uh--” 

“No, no, don’t get me wrong!” he said quickly. “You stuck to your guns. That’s brave.” 

“Stupid,” Poe said. 

“Well, yeah, that too. Not mutually exclusive.” 

Finn grinned at him, glancing for a moment over to Rose and the perch Rey had since taken at her feet. So much had come to pass in the few days since their meeting on the Finalizer and still there was a familiarity humming between them that Poe couldn’t compare with anything else, not if he were being honest with himself.

“Do you want to take a walk? I mean, it’s a ship, we can’t walk far, but--” Finn interrupted himself with a silent grimace turned inward, and again the center of Poe burned hot.

“We can certainly try.” 

* * *

 

They started wearing a path into the perimeter hall by their fourth lap, and on the seventh Poe overheard Nien muttering to C’ai and one of the maintenance workers that a route had been established, skirting around the eastern reaches of Hutt Space to make a temporary landing on a moon of Lorrd, a distant world closer to the border of Wild Space than any remnant of the late New Republic.

“I heard stories about Lorrd,” Finn said once they had passed from the bridge to the hallway. “They had massive libraries and schools… the Empire never got there, I think. Always heard officers around my stations talking about how they wanted to get out that way and take them out....neutralize a threat and what have you.”

On their laps around the ship, Poe let Finn talk, get anything and everything off his chest. He talked about the other stormtroopers in his old unit, the fathiers in Canto Bight, the play-by-play of his fight with Captain Phasma, the one blurry memory he had of home.

“I probably shouldn’t call it that,” he said. “But why not?”

It was warm, he said, and a warmer voice sang to him at notes that hung above the tops of trees, and there was a love that strung it all together, held it close--of course, until someone barged in to cut the thread of it all loose. 

“I know she’s probably dead,” Finn said, “but I like to think that my mother is okay.” 

The ring pressed heavy on Poe’s collarbone, heavy enough that after a few minutes of quiet it pushed him to fish it out from under his shirt and hold it up so Finn could see just how the light shined off its curves. “My mother… this is all that’s left of her. And she’s okay, one with the Force as Leia would probably say.” 

Finn reached for the metal and hesitated, moving forward only after Poe nodded. His fingers rubbed along the edges, his breaths deep and long. “I feel her in there,” he said. “I’ve never met her… but…” He followed the circle of it until his thumb ran into Poe’s own grip on it, and it stayed there, pressed up against him longer than it made sense to. And when he caught Poe’s eye there was a grin there to meet him, tightly held like he was afraid to let it burst open. “Can you sense her?” Finn asked quietly. 

“I don’t think I’ve ever tried,” Poe said. 

Finn pulled his hands back, let Poe cradle the ring between his two palms in front of his chest--he didn’t know what he was supposed to be looking for, if Finn had convinced himself that something was there when it wasn’t. Still he tried. Closed his eyes. Focused on the round bit of weight before him until the white noise of the ship smothered itself and all that was left was a familiar presence, both cupped in his hands and looming lovingly over him, lasting only until the lump in his throat caught at an angle and made him choke. 

“Are you okay?” 

“I’m fine.” The ring fell back to his chest as he tried to even his breathing, holding up a hand when Finn stepped forward with that kindness he held in every angle of his body. “Really. I just… I think I need to go lie down.” 

Finn didn’t push the matter, but Poe felt his eyes on him as he rounded the corner in search of an empty stretch of space where if he couldn’t sleep, he could at least pretend to.

* * *

 

Holdo’s final moment played over and over in his dreams.

On his shuttle, a couple people had screamed, another few had gasped, but the rest was a deep percussion of hands slamming against chests--in his dreams metal cut against metal in a silent sweep, over and over and over and over again. Once something in his head had said it was enough, the cloud of fire and debris settling in the expanse of space over Crait, that was when Kes’ voice crawled into his ear.

_From what you’ve told me, someone was always going to have to command the cruiser, son. Whether you did what you did or not, she was always going to die. Kriff… your mother would’ve said that way out fit her like a glove--quite the style._

_You can’t beat yourself up for everything, Poe_. 

The shuttles around him started popping into fire. The Supremacy tilted and whined as it split apart, the old fear that Finn and Rose and BB-8 had been at the incision churning in his gut. 

_Listen to me: do you want to know how many plans we Pathfinders carried out that left so many of us dead? How many call signs in Green Squadron got regifted before Endor? Your mother planned and led a mission before Endor where only two came back, including herself. You learn, but you don’t dwell. You’ll never make it that way._

In his dreams, they were back on the bridge of the Raddus, in the shuttle hangar just outside. He saw himself in third person, zipping backwards: his blaster tucked itself back into the holster as his back turned to Holdo, chairs and stools righted themselves with his hands pulling back from them and the attention of everyone on the bridge on their stations where they belonged.

And still--the scene now righted still cut to the flash of light in the distance, himself on the shuttle, everything that had been in its proper place reduced to nothing. 

* * *

 

By the third day, the novelty of the situation had worn off and the cramped quarters too easily helped innocent remarks rub the wrong way. The rumor of Lorrd had been replaced by Myrkr, a moon of Cerea, and some planet no one had on their navigation maps but Kaydel swore General Organa or Rey could track down. “Atollon,” she said. “It was a base in the early, early days of the Rebellion--”

“If it even exists,” C’ai said.

“Hera Syndulla is not a liar,” said Nien Nunb, and then their whole bitter feud found itself refueled, the argument taking over the entire corner.

Poe quickly made his escape, Kaydel following after him. 

“Fancy a game of Dejarik?” she said, motioning toward the free table. “I’ve gotten pretty decent the past couple days.” 

“I’m all right, actually.” 

“Yeah, yeah Dameron… preserve that ego. Oh, wait!” she said. “I think Finn was looking for you?” She laughed at whatever expression must have crossed his face. “He was down by the bunk where they moved Rose. She’s awake now, you know.” 

“Yeah?” 

“Couple broken bones, but she’ll be fine.” Kaydel clapped him on the shoulder and headed back to where General Organa was listening to Threepio and Artoo prattle on about something or other, undoubtedly still on the hunt for her next Dejarik opponent.

The section of the Falcon that housed the bunks was even more cramped when empty than the bridge was at capacity--the hall lined with doors to the tiny rooms could barely let two people pass shoulder-to-shoulder, and Poe expected to find it swarming with far more than what he found when he arrived. 

Most of the doors to the bunks were open, save for one, and it was at that one where Finn sat with his legs hugged to his chest, staring off at the wall opposite without quite taking in his surroundings. 

“Kaydel said you were down here,” he said, and Finn perked up, scrambling to his feet. “You all right?” 

“Yeah, yeah, totally.” Finn eyed him then looked away, eyeing him again before turning his attention on a couple suspect stains on the ceiling and back at the stray curl that always stuck against Poe’s forehead in the heat. 

“You sure you’re okay?” 

“Yeah, I--” Finn sighed as he cut himself off, taking Poe by the elbow and dragging him down the corridor until they hit a knob of a dead end with pipes and blinking lights far from the doors to the bunks. “I’m confused. There’s so much I still don’t understand, and I hate it--” 

“Whoa, whoa, slow down man,” Poe said, gripping Finn’s shoulders. “Confused about what?” 

Finn’s brow knotted in distress, eyes darting around the perimeter of Poe’s head but never looking directly. “I just don’t know what to make of certain things, you know? I don’t know how I’m supposed to feel about them--” 

“Buddy, you’re losing me--” 

Finn’s hands latched onto the sides of Poe’s face and pulled him into a bruising, closed-mouth kiss. By the time Poe’s head caught up with where his lips were, the closeness of Finn’s body, Finn had already pulled them apart. He held them there at arm’s length, searching every inch of Poe’s face as it flushed a violent red. 

“That felt different,” Finn murmured to himself. “That was pretty different.” 

“Wh--”

“Rose kissed me, back on Crait,” he said quickly. “And I didn’t...well, _quite_ get it, and I talked to Rey and we tested it and it still felt weird, and she said, ‘why don’t you talk to Poe,’ and I guess I didn’t really _talk_ just now, but…” Amid the rambling, his eyes had darted all over their corner of the ship until they finally found Poe’s own again; and only then did his mouth finally slow down into quiet. 

“We can still talk if you want to,” Poe said. He tried to ignore the way his heart was twisting in his chest, how the whole front of him burned in anticipation with all his questions as kindling, Finn’s touch on his shoulders fanning it into an even bigger life. 

“I don’t--I don’t know…” he said. “Is it always like...that? I never got into this kind of thing in the First Order, and--” 

“Not always.”

The way Finn stared at him now was how no one on the Falcon looked at him anymore--either they didn’t know him, like Rey, or they had seen how the threads of command had popped apart on the Raddus, how his own sense of self had unraveled while a holo playing in the back of his head watched them all die, and his grief had never been pretty. But Finn: he looked at him the same way he had on the Finalizer, but with all the relief and joy in his beaming grin pushed up into his eyes so anyone who didn’t know better would think something was wrong.

He heard about what happened, of course. The difference was that it didn’t seem to matter.

“How then?”

The words had barely left Finn’s mouth before both of Poe’s hands were latched around his face, pulling them both together, coaxing his lips apart as they stumbled back into the wall. A pipe dug into Poe’s back but he could hardly notice with Finn’s hands dropping from his shoulders to his hips, his teeth digging into Poe’s bottom lip as he followed the cues and short-circuited any coherent thought attempting its way through Poe’s head.

“Oh,” Finn gasped when they pulled apart for breath, resting his forehead on top of Poe’s mop of curls. “I see, then.” 

“If that was--too much, or--” 

“No, no...I…” The corner of Finn’s mouth twitched out a grin and he pressed a kiss to the line where Poe’s nose met his cheek. “It wasn’t. I promise.” He squeezed his hand and disappeared around the corner, his footsteps fading as he made his way back to the bridge. 

* * *

 

_“I wouldn’t want Ma to be disappointed in me, is all. I don’t think I could live with that.”_

_“Disappointed in you? Really? I’d put all the credits I have on me that Shara would have been right beside you if she were alive today. Disappointed in you… it’s like you--”_

_“What, Dad?”_

_“Poe…”_

_“Say it. ‘Like I didn’t even know her.’ I didn’t really, though, did I?”_

* * *

 

By the fifth day, they had already had to stop to refuel--some backwater moon had offered discretion for a number of credits they’d managed to pool together--and Rose had escaped the confines of her bunk by way of one of General Organa’s spare canes. She and Rey teamed up against Kaydel on Dejarik, and around them rumors swirled about final destinations of Akiva or Dantooine.

Poe watched their game from afar and finally made his way up by the bench after Rey and Rose had evened the score.

“I’m glad to see you out and about, Rose.”

She smiled, offered a two-finger salute. “Me too. There’s a lot more going on here than in that cramped bunk.” 

“I can imagine.” A whole host of things to say to her started clamoring for room at the back of his throat-- _leave the dumb pilot stunts for me, thank you for saving Finn’s life, your sister was one of my favorite people and I’m sorry I’m so sorry I’m so so so sorry, I think Rey’s blushing so you should look into that_ \--but he swallowed it all, made his way over to where General Organa had taken her post for the morning. 

“I heard from Pava and Wexley today,” she said as he sat down beside her. “They were successful. Clans Wren and Rook are going to help us get back on our feet.”

Poe nodded and forced all the questions that popped up in front of his eyes back down with the rest of his remarks left unsaid. All except one--“So where are they joining back up with us?”

“You’ll be the first to know when we figure that out,” she said. 

They sat in silence for a long while, long enough to see Chewbacca chase a couple porgs through the crowd that had gathered to watch Rose take on Kaydel in Dejarik on her own, for Tabala to take that same path Chewbacca carved with more difficulty, grumbling the whole way and wishing that they would choose someplace to land already. 

“Poe…” she said--suddenly and quietly, but still with a strong sense of urgency. “When I die, I want you to take my place--” 

“General, don’t talk like that--” 

“On this ship, in the Resistance… I’m all that’s left of my time,” she said. “Luke, Han… stars, Lando passed years ago. And I trust you.”

“Why?”

A long couple moments passed before he realized he’d spoken aloud. 

“You do stupid for the right reason. And you learn,” she added. “Don’t think I don’t know stupid. I’ve done my fair share. It’s a rite of passage, if you ask me.” 

He could have fought her on it but he didn’t, the urge subsiding before it could crash on their feet and wash all over the rest of the bridge.

“Remember how I reprimanded you during your Jakku debriefing for talking back to and antagonizing--um, your captors?” she said after a few moments, looking away from the window and straight into his eyes with a wink. “That was a little hypocritical of me.” 

Behind them, the Dejarik game came to a roaring conclusion, Rose whooping in victory as loudly as her broken rib allowed, and Poe watched as the rest of those on the bridge lined up to challenge her next--and some who probably knew nothing of how to play but just wanted a chance to talk to the Resistance’s newest legend one-on-one.

He’d have to thank her for saving Finn’s life later.

* * *

 

The sleeping arrangements by that point in their seemingly unending journey had solidified--stakes had been claimed, and only tense negotiations could offer any hope for alterations. 

Poe’s was the spot of the hall by the porg nest and no one was jealous. He practically had the entire stretch to himself, which is why he was startled to find Finn sitting by the nest and rubbing the mother porg’s stomach long after those sleeping on the bridge had called lights out. “Jessika is going to hate these things,” Finn said without looking up.

“Didn’t even think about that,” he said, sitting down beside him. “But yes. She definitely will.”

He waited for Finn to say something else, but he kept on stroking the porg.

“So what’s going on?” Poe said.

“Just wanted to see you.”

The porg was loving the attention, but the undercurrent between this roundabout conversation made him wish he’d chosen someplace populated with fewer cute birds to catch some shut-eye. Then he could look Finn in the face, get closer to the truth of whatever was rolling around in his head.

“I’m glad that we even can. I thought you were going to die at two different times between D’Qar and Crait,” Poe said quietly.

At that, Finn finally turned his attention from the porg. “Between crashing on Jakku and watching all those shuttles get shot down… I guess we’re even now, huh?”

“I don’t want to make this a competition. It’s just…” he sighed and leaned his head back against the wall. “It’s been an unbelievably bad couple weeks.”

Something warm hovered over Poe’s hand between them, and when he looked down, Finn’s had covered it completely. The pressure was just right, easing Poe’s nerves that had been overworked and prodding at others that he’d of late tried to ignore.

“I know,” he said, squeezing Poe’s hand. “I’d, um...can I kiss you again?”

He turned toward Finn and found a soft grin matching his own, and when they came together it was slow and simple, a long drag of their lips until they were apart again and could see each other’s flush up close.

“That’s as nice as it was the first time,” Finn said, grinning.

And for an instant, Poe could let himself drown out the rest of the uncertainties and fears, the fresh losses and the ones to come. Could let himself wonder if this was another in a long line of mirrors reflecting his mother’s life onto his own, overlaying a stolen moment in the aftermath of Hoth thirty years into the future, a moment when the night of the war looked as if it would last forever.

In that instant, drinking in the marvel of the man before him, he was sure he could see the end of that struggle, the edges of the sunrise lining their world in gold.

 


End file.
